The Listening Club - 20th September 2026

Greetings folks,

Hope you're all hanging in there. Bit of a neither / or week in Amsterdam, bit of rain, bit of sun, nothing special, enlivened by a trip out to the Concertgebouw yesterday to hear some lesser-played Steve Reich stuff (and one new commission) on occasion of his soon come 90th birthday. I guess the competition between him and Philip Glass remains solid as they're both celebrating that milestone, and both still writing pretty damn well (as the aforementioned excellent new commission showed). No problem from a listening perspective, natch, here's hoping they both hang in there for their respective centenaries!

Last Sunday we had @ogili in the chair, bamboozling the assembled with his pick of Casper Iskov's 2023 "Commercial Remake" cover version of My Bloody Valentine's "Isn't Anything" album, which definitely showed the album in a different light. Thanks to Oli for the pick and for flipping the frisb across to me, @kleptones, which means it's time to go all italic...

"... right then. As with most long-term LC-ers, I have a rolling list of possible picks; things get added, things get removed, and occasionally one gets given it's freedom for others to hear, and so it was going to be this week, until this new album (freshly released last Friday) entered into my purview, and, well, the list can wait.

So yes, a very new release, although apparently not fully new music, as one of the contributors moved on from this earth a few years ago, leaving behind plenty of raw materials to be developed, and a style of music that, year-on-year, seems to be getting more public attention and popularity, as shown by this release, which is on a so-called "big" label and looks to have a decent promotional budget, or at least it seems so from here. Is that a good thing? I'd like to think so.

So... not wanting to give too much away, and without having heard it myself yet, hem hem - knowing some of the previous work of the participants, this is most likely a "turn up the volume (looking at the waveform this thing has a wide dynamic range, so make the most of it if you can), find a comfortable place between the speakers, lean back and let it wash over you" pick. The kind of thing that gets airtime chez-K in the late evenings and early mornings (interested to see how it fits with your timezones), and that Hype Cat really, really enjoys stretching out on the sofa to, bless 'im. Hoping that it finds an equivalent niche for yourselves also.

Drinking club: for me, probably a glass of red wine, or maybe a favourite whisky. Ymmv, but something to savour would be good, I'd say".

Right then, download is here, stream's below:

Hope to see you 20:00 BST (GMT+1) later today.